way into one of brilliancy by the large hazel eyes and the vivid
whiteness of the skin. Kendal watched her from his corner, where his
conversation with two musical young ladies had been suddenly suspended by
the arrival of the actress, and thought that his impression of the week
before had been, if anything, below the truth.

'She comes into the room well, too,' he said to himself critically; 'she
is not a mere milkmaid; she has some manner, some individuality. Ah, now
Fernandez'--naming the Minister--'has got hold of her. Then, I suppose,
Rushbrook (the member of the Government) will come next, and we commoner
mortals in our turn. What absurdities these things are!'

His reflections, however, were stopped by the exclamations of the girls
beside him, who were already warm admirers of Miss Bretherton, and wild
with enthusiasm at finding themselves in the same room with her. They
discovered that he was going to see her in the evening; they envied him,
they described the play to him, they dwelt in superlatives on the crowded
state of the theatre and on the plaudits which greeted Miss Bretherton's
first appearance in the ballroom scene in the first act, and they allowed
themselves--being aesthetic damsels robed in sober greenish-grays--a
gentle lament over the somewhat violent colouring of one of the actress's
costumes, while all the time keeping their eyes furtively fixed on the
gleaming animated profile and graceful shoulders over which, in the
entrance of the second drawing-room, the Minister's gray head was
bending.

Mrs. Stuart did her duty bravely. Miss Bretherton had announced to her,
with a thousand regrets, that she had only half an hour to give. 'We poor
professionals, you know, must dine at four. That made me late, and now I
find I am such a long way from home that six is the latest moment I can